Heat Part II, this time with Dillinger

Public Enemies was much better when it was called Heat.

Both films are about relentlessly organized bank robbers and their methodical police counterparts. In both there are lovely women who complicate the bank robbers’ continued success. Both are long, drawn-out examinations on police and criminal procedure, and both are directed by Michael Mann, one of the most underrated directors in the business.

Similarities aside, though, Mann’s new movie is hardly self-plagiarism — Public Enemies moves to its own rhythm — even if it is awful similar to 1995’s Heat, a movie that used atmosphere and mood to evoke a bank robber’s unceasing paranoia of capture, or just loneliness. Maybe Mann (Miami Vice, The Insider, Ali) was channeling John Dillinger while directing Heat, and now here he is telling Dillinger’s story in a film he couldn’t have foreseen 14 years ago. Or maybe he just repeated himself in a new time period with new actors. I can’t speculate further without infringing on a talented moviemaker’s catalog of crime capers.

John Dillinger, “public enemy No. 1” as J. Edgar Hoover called him, was a criminal of principle who outshined his contemporaries and brought the entire federal government — or was it the Mafia? — crashing down on him. Here he’s played uncannily by Johnny Depp, who gives him more humanity than a criminal and murderer deserves, but it is that humanity that allow Mann’s movies their unique edge. Depp, and Mann's screenwriting (along with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman), never attempt to explain Dillinger, the man or the myth. They just present him, factually, unblinkingly.

The film follows Dillinger’s rise in the 1930s from ex-con to the folk hero of crime lore, betrayed and gunned down on the sidewalk outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater, where his last moments alive were spent watching Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama. Yes, that’s the destination of Public Enemies, but it’s not the route.

In scenes of daring bank robberies, armed shoot-outs with Thompsons clucking away and high-speed chases in Model A Fords, Dillinger is shown as a loyal alpha male slugging men for their rude behavior, demanding love from his latest flame (Marion Cotillard) and forcing the mobs’ hand when he brings a reconstituted FBI and its crimestopping G-Men sweeping through the Midwest looking for trophies for Hoover’s mantle. Dillinger may have been a brute, but Depp plays him as a lover and a fighter, and a man deeply focused on beating the system. Of course, he’s wealthy beyond his imagination, but it’s not satisfying because money alone isn’t proof of victory.

The film shares with us Dillinger’s biggest flaw: his friends. “Baby Face” Nelson, “Pretty Boy” Floyd and Capone associate Frank Nitti, these were the men that would eventually contribute to his ultimate demise, if not directly than from the heat brought in from Washington, D.C, where the FBI had a third of its operating budget designated for Dillinger’s capture or death. Also, Dillinger never stopped robbing people, which couldn’t have helped his wanted status. At one point in the film, Dillinger strolls into the FBI's Chicago field office, where they have a wing designated to his capture. He peruses through the cluster of desks admiring the work being done to track him down, and then even exchanges words with men who were supposed to know Dillinger better than their own wives. Apparently this really happened.

Investigating Dillinger's crimes is FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), who was later erased from bureau history by a vendetta-prone Hoover, that weasel. Bale, whose single-note performance grows very thin here, never seems Depp’s equal and the FBI scenes droop because of it — although one interrogation sequence is superbly acted. For once I would have preferred that Mann stuck exclusively with the criminals rather than balancing a story across two polarized sides. One actor, Stephen Lang, plays an older FBI agent who has the best, and last line, in the movie in a jailhouse interview with Dillinger’s girlfriend. After Lang’s big scene ended I was picturing him in the Purvis role and admiring the potential improvements. For once, Bale was all wrong here.

Exactly how accurate the events from the movie are — the prison break, the dust-up at the Little Bohemia Lodge, the set-up at the Biograph — I will let you discover with a Google search. Most of the scenes take place where they actually happened. A caution, though: The film is not the history of the facts, but a scenario of Dillinger’s potential emotions so don’t take too much stock in Mann’s revisionist Dillinger history.

Overall, this is not one of Mann’s strongest films. It’s a well-made picture, with wonderful costumes and cars, and with all of Mann’s trademarks — an inconspicuous near-ambient score, terrifying weapon effects that seem too real to be just effects, and beautiful night photography — but it’s missing the forward momentum of some of his past works. And despite the big names in the cast list, Public Enemies drags itself to a point we all know is coming outside the Biograph. And when we get there, it's all very anti-climactic considering we still don't understand Dillinger, Purvis or what drove them to this intersection. The route, in this case, wasn’t worth the trip.